[B-Greek] Are there any aspect only languages?

Rolf Furuli furuli at online.no
Wed Sep 20 03:31:57 EDT 2006


Dear Donald,

As a confirmation of Con´s answer I refer to Carlota Smith (1991) "The 
Parameter of Ascept", who discusses Mandarin thorougly and says (p 343): 
"The Mandarin language has a rich viewpoint component. There are two 
perfectives, two imperfectives, and a neutral viewpoint...temporal location 
is conveyed with adverbials and modal auxiliaries. Mandarin does not have 
tense, so that indication of temporal location is not obligatory." Note, 
however, that Smith defines aspect somewhat differently from Broman Olsen.

B. Comrie (1985) "Tense" discusses Burmese under the heading "Tenseless 
languages" and says (p.51): "What Burmese shows us, then, is a language 
where time reference per se, is not grammaticalized, i.e.; there is no 
tense."

However, the hebraist Z.Zewit has claimed that all languages have tenses (Z. 
Zewit (1988) "Talking funny in Biblical Henglish (sic) and solving the 
problem of the yaqtul tense". Hebrew Studies 29:26-32.

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donald R. Vance, Ph.D." <donaldrvance at mac.com>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 4:24 AM
Subject: [B-Greek] Are there any aspect only languages?


> B-Greekers:
> Are there, in fact, any modern languages which are aspect only (i.e.,
> whose verbs are grammaticalized for aspect only and all temporal
> placement is handled otherwise--use of adverbs, etc.)?
>
> Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.
> Professor of Biblical Languages and Literature
> Oral Roberts University
> dvance at oru.edu
> donaldrvance at mac.com
>





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